Welcome to 2023, New Chapter in Humanity & AI.
You probably heard a lot about ChatGPT, AI or similar topics over the past few months. I don’t want to talk about how cool it is or how good is it performing. Rather, I thought I have to write the article about the revolution and massive shift in the AI and technology that potentially can impact other industries sooner or later.
In this article, I discuss the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on our life the near future. I also talk about how to prepare yourself for the upcoming months and years to be ahead of game and competition and make financial benefits.
If you have a knowledge about AI, you can skip the intro, and if you want to know more information about the history let’s review where were we before early 2022 and what happened later in the year!
Introduction & Story
Why AI?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rapidly growing field that involves creating machines that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as understanding natural language, recognizing images, and making decisions. In the early days of AI, researchers focused primarily on developing rule-based systems that could perform specific tasks, such as playing chess or solving mathematical equations. However, these systems were limited in their capabilities and could only perform the tasks they were specifically programmed to do.
Early Stages of AI
In the 1980s and 1990s, researchers began to explore the use of “expert systems,” which used knowledge from human experts to make decisions. However, these systems were still limited in their capabilities and required a great deal of human input to function properly.
Recent Stages of AI
With the advancement in technology and having more information available on the internet, AI has been able to improve a lot. In fact, it has been used in a wide range of applications, from self-driving cars to virtual assistants or chatbots, and it continues to evolve at a rapid pace. You probably have benefited from the AI even on your phone where your gallery can categorize your pictures and allow you to save time and find your pictures quickly. Another example is weather predictions, or being able to see the live close captions of videos in different languages instantly.
This type of AI is called passive, meaning that given the information from the training model, it can predict what to output and help us with our tasks.
Genrative AI — Latest Stage of AI
The problem with passive AI was the machine couldn’t go beyond what was the original definition and use case and its abilities were limited to the static model originally given to the machine. This was simply because the AI didn’t understand the metadata of the request and the model was limited. With the revolution of Generative AI, everything has changed. Advancements in tech now allow the machine to train on Big Language Model. This means that machines can read every piece of information available on the internet, and understand and connect the pieces together. With generative AI possibilities are endless and it will continue to have a profound impact on our daily lives.
OpenAI company has been able to implement this technology and be the first in this competition, making it valued at over $4B over a night with a record growth of 0–1 million in less than a week. Open AI introduced DALL-E and Chat GPT 3.0 and everything has changed since then. The model developed by OpenAI is capable of generating images from text descriptions. Given a text prompt, such as “a two-story pink house with a white fence,” DALL-E will generate a corresponding image of a pink house with a white fence.
ChatGPT is a revolutionary generative AI developed by OpenAI, specifically designed for natural language processing tasks. It is trained on a massive dataset of text and can generate human-like responses to a given prompt. It can be used for tasks such as language translation, question answering, and even writing coherent and fluent text passages.
Both DALL-E and ChatGPT are examples of powerful generative AI models that demonstrate the capabilities of AI in creating new and previously unseen data based on patterns learned from existing data.Industries will be impacted
Impacting industries
With the high accuracy of responses of ChatGPT and upcoming similar AI technologies, there will be a massive shift in many industries. I have listed a few of them below.
Software Engineering
As of writing this article, Chat GPT is able to write a code for you. This could be an HTML page that you request or a mobile application in Swift or Kotlin language.
Currently, the output is limited since it’s a chat environment and results are bound to single-page output. However, technically we aren’t far away from having a useful application generated by AI. AI will potentially do the heavy lifting in the coding leaving engineers becoming an approver or verifiers of the output. The other way is also possible. In near future, we will see AI being integrated as a pull-request reviewer giving insightful feedback about the changes.
Recently Andrej Karpathy,Director of AI at Tesla mentioned 80% of their code is AI generated using Github Co-pilot (tweet).
Personally, I don’t expect the entire software engineering career to fade away rather it will change shape and that’s why it is required to keep yourself updated to be ahead of the game.
iOS — Swift example:
HTML:
Art and creative contents
Technologies like DALL-E already made a lot of professional artists panic. People now have the option to refer to this AI and type what they think they want and the machine will generate the artwork for them. This is a huge advancement in how we work with creative content. Instead of searching for hours to find the right content and paying heavy prices for the licensing, now there is an option for people to type their requests and get multiple answers on the spot.
Now there is a big argument in the industry saying that since all these AI models have been trained using human artists, AI Companies either have to remove the input data from their model or pay a royalty fee for generating new content based on their artworks.
If you are an artist, it’s always good to protect your data by making sure you write how your artwork can be used so that if you see any violation, you have the ability to make legal action.
Education
Education will be revolutionized sooner than any other sector. Students are already using ChatGPT to write their homework or take exams. Many universities published a notice and banned the use of ChatGPT. However, I believe these resistants will fade away and education will change forever. Students should learn how to use the tool, become more efficient in their research and perform better rather than being banned and think about what’s next rather than performing tasks manually as we know them.
On the bigger picture, let’s step back and think about how the current education system works. We have teachers whose job is to pass a piece of knowledge to a group of students. But each student is unique and has a different learning curve and skill set. What if each student could get a teacher that understands their way of learning, strong sides, and weaknesses? In that case, the student could learn new materials faster and more excitingly. Is it too radical? I know, but don’t be surprised!
UI/UX Design
The landscape of UX/UI design could change. Personally, I don’t think AI can replace this industry. However, designers and researchers can come and ideate and get some mock examples.
As you can see the quality is not there yet, however in the AI world things changes exponentially. Something that is not good today will look x100 times better in near future.
Accounting
Accounting is one of the few industries that can change shape greatly. It wouldn’t be a surprise if you see a virtual CPA or AI-based platform that allows you to upload your financial data and provide you recommendations, about tax planning, tax deductions, tax benefits, and tax calculations customized to your status.
Law
I believe Law will see a revolution in the upcoming years. We would see new platforms that can make legal advice, summarize and craft arguments to present in court, answer questions and even file a claim on your behalf. This can change the shape of how we communicate with lawyers and solicitors.
In fact, right now some platforms started to work in this space.
Note that since Chat GPT understands the metadata of the request, it can reply to requests even with grammatical mistakes.
Health and fitness Industry:
Technologies like ChatGPT will revolutionize the health industry. You will see virtual doctors, virtual therapist, virtual nurses, etc. in near future.
Researchers put ChatGPT into test for United States Medical Licensing Exam and the results were promising (article). The exam is a three-part exam that is required for medical licensure in the U.S. by all medical school graduates. Researchers found that ChatGPT performed near or at the passing threshold for the three exams and demonstrated high levels of consistency and insight in its explanations.
Need assistant with finding the right health/beauty product? Chat GPT is able to make personal recommendations, assess your health and give you suggestions. It can even give you a diet and workout routine!
Threat to companies and workers:
Many companies across different industries already feel being threatend
Google and search Engines
There is a big question now if I can come to Chat GPT and ask a question and get the answer, why should I type it in google and browse through endless results and ads to get my answer?
Advertisements
Advertisement companies usually collect and track user behavior across different websites. If companies like Open AI can be the future destination for users to respond to their queries, it can become so huge that can set new pricing and rules for the entire market.
Stock photography
Stock photography portals are another business types that will be impacted. News reporters, magazines, etc. can go to AI and ask for content rather than going through these websites. Some websites such as Shutter Stock has been ahead of the game and already integrated such feature into their site so people can choose if they need to generate content or real-human content.
Big questions ahead
Web and internet and it’s content was made by humans and of course some bots. Now we are facing a new content generator around and it can raise serious questions.
1- What content is real, what’s not?
This issue can be huge, but before answering the question we need to take a look at it from a different perspective. Is it for commerce? is it marketing material? Is it legal advice, Is it health related?
In some cases like marketing it really doesn’t matter how the copy has been generated, however in the case of law or health-related materials, the audience must know if the content is accurate and written by a human.
Having said that this issue potentially can be resolved by having new laws and policies in place. In fact, China mandated a new law that all images generated by AI must be published with a watermark (news article).
2- Is generated content accurate?
Generative AI that produce new content which might not be highly accurate, but how important is the accuracy? what is the context? If AI uses big language model and parses internet to gather it’s information, how can AI generate future content based on other inaccurately generated data?
3- How to verify accuracy of data
Regardless of how we recieve data, it is important to have a way to assure data is accurate.
4- Evil AI vs Good AI
If a large language model like Chat GPT has an understanding of all contents on the internet, it wouldn’t be a surprise if we see a similar product being used to exploit people, damage businesses by knowing about them, or harm them.
5- Students, Studying, Universities
Students can now solve their problems by using Chat GPT. How do universities need to structure future education, exams, and homework so that are adaptable to the latest technologies? What can they teach students so that they can become more creative and efficient?
6- Misuse of the tool
Tools like Open AI have hybrid governance, meaning a human will curate and set content policies. Having said that there have been reports that people got their way around some of the restrictions (news article). How do AI companies have to make sure their AI won’t be used to harm people?
7- AI Sentient
Another big question that has been discussed over the past few years that if AI can understand us, and our feelings. Do they also have a feeling? Do they have to be treated like human kind? Do we need to pass laws to give them some rights and not hurt them?
Future of generative AI
AI is becoming more real and visible in our life. Here are few predictions I have for future:
AI as Operating System
It wouldn’t be far from the reality to see AI taking over all operating systems, managing tasks and optimizing runtimes, have a human interface that understands what we want, and what documents we need and gives us access to them efficiently.
AI as personal assistant
Phone virtual assistant products like Siri, Alexa, Bixby are already here and available. However we should be able to see a full virtual assistant as a service being always with you in near future. The virtual assistant can be over the AR glass or being virtually available for you, making reservations on your behalf, talk to your insurance companies, make appointments, fill a calendar for you, etc in 24/7 fashion.
Content Creation
Chat GPT can become actual content creator and help companies write product copies, poems, lyrics, make blog posts, social media posts, etc.
AI Startups
Chat GPT is currently capable of generating startup ideas, writing business plan tied to your needs etc.
We are seeing AI startups becoming more visible and they can help us with many tasks like generating music, art and teaching you. The possibilities are truly endless.
Market investment opportunity?
Some of these changes I talked about above are already here. This demonstrates the potential impact of Chat GPT and generative AI on our lives. If I want to make a prediction, I believe Open AI will have a bright future and what we are seeing now is just the beginning of the era.
OpenAI received $1B in investment funds from Microsoft in 2019. In January 2023 Microsoft announced another $10B investment in the company making it grow hugely. Chat GPT also introduced a professional version to monetize the platform (article). Open AI expects to have $1B in revenue by 2024 (article) and I can foresee it becoming a trillion company in less than 10 years.
Microsoft is a giant company that failed to beat Google and Apple in smartphones and search engines. It seems like they are making big bets this time by investing in cutting-edge AI/AR/VR technologies and partnering with companies like OpenAI and Meta, also open sourcing tools, etc, and making everyone interested in their platforms. Microsoft currently owns about 49% of OpenAI it seems to have the upper hand in the AI world at this time. They also announced ChatGPT will be available on Azure and we should be able to see a lot of interest and revenue going toward this platform(article). It seems investing in Microsoft can pay off well in the future.
Disclaimer I’m not a financial expert and this is my personal opinion everyone should make decisions based on what they think is correct after talking with experts in the industry.
Summary
AI presence can be felt more than ever and the quality of its output is becoming better every day. In fact what if I told you half of the introduction was written by Chat GPT itself? Chat GPT 3.0 is also not the final stop in AI. The model is constantly evolving and going to be exponentially better in version 4.0 and beyond. My personal opinion is AI won’t probably take any job away forever, however, it will transform most industries forever.
If you’re in tech, I highly recommend keeping your skills sharp, follow the news and find the next platforms and tools, and getting experience with them, save your time and do better in your career.
If you are an entrepreneur, it’s a good time to jump in and find some use cases of Chat GPT in real world scenario and the APIs are free to experiment.
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